May 1, National Day of Action on Immigration. Arturo Hernandez Garcia is still in detention in Aurora, CO, after being arrested for overstaying his visa. Arturo petitioned the US government for legal citizenship half a dozen times, through a few different avenues, and was denied each time. Our system is at fault here, not Arturo.
Pondering Arturo's case, and the case of many in detention, lead me to wonder: which group overstays their visa most often? Turns out, it's Canadians, with slightly over 93,000 overstays at the end of fiscal 2015 (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/homeland-security-produces-first-estimate-of-foreign-visitors-to-u-s-who-overstay-deadline-to-leave/). If we take Europe as a group instead of individual countries, it has over 123,000 overstays. What about Mexico? In fiscal 2015, Mexico had just over 42,000 overstays. That's less than half of Canada's..... and yet, there were no white people in detention during the two years I volunteered at the GEO facility in Aurora.
We have to get beyond the labels of "illegal" and "legal" to wrestle with some difficult questions. The answers are never simple or clear-cut, but we should wrestle with them, instead of accepting the labels at face value. People's lives are at stake.
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